ESG Aversion: Experimental Evidence on Perceptions and Preferences

We thank Corinne Low, Colin Sullivan, and Judd Kessler for generously sharing the code for building resume-rating infrastructure. We thank Anders Anderson, Mark Dean, Emanuele Colonnelli, Michael Ewens, Stefano Giglio, Hanna Hottenrott, Harrison Hong, Torsten Jochem, Steven Kaplan, John List, Alexander Montag, Marcus Opp, Abhijeet Singh, Jan Starsman, Per Stromberg, Jack Willis, Jin Yu, Yifei Zhan, and participants at various conferences and seminars for helpful comments. Yuya Wang, Ziyue Zhu, and Xuzhi Yuan provided excellent research assistance. Funding for this project was provided by VINNOVA and Columbia University. This project is registered in the AEA RCT Registry (AEARCTR-0007973 for the startup experiment and AEARCTR-0004982 for the VC investor experiment). The detailed pre-registration plans are not publicly available but can be provided upon request. The experiments received approval from the Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) of Columbia University and the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE). All errors are our own. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

• July 17, 2025
• November 6, 2025